INA's story is a tangled saga involving nationalism & treason, as well as heroism & deceit. To take each strand individually will be unfair to evaluate its place in history.
Indian sepoys who left their homes and crossed oceans to witness a world being conquered and exploited by the British, sought to understand, interpret, and even profit from it all.
General KM Cariappa's experiment debunked the martial race theory and illustrated that differences in ethnicity, caste, religious, and regional backgrounds were not the determinants of fighting capabilities of soldiers.
Indian Army still has regiments with caste, religion, and community names, and asks for caste certificates during recruiting. It's time to build a truly inclusive military.
The soldier took a bullet to his chest while fighting Mahsud Tribes at Haidar Kach in 1921, but took the rifle of another soldier and launched a counter-attack.
The collusion between the new class of bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen and trade union bosses perpetuates itself partly because of the short-run benefits and partly because they see no way out of the system, wrote author MH Mody in 1980.
IAF is firming up plans to revamp airlift capabilities with medium transport aircraft that will be assembled in India & serve as its main workhorse. Embraer is leading contender as of now.
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